j7uy5 | June 17, 2007From
href="http://www.christianet.com/christianecards/evolutiontracts/index.htm">ChristiaNet.
They think it is clever, I guess.
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
src="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/images/evolutiontracts_1.swf"
flashvars="">
This is the first in a series of Free Evolution Tracts that can be sent
as e-cards. What does it mean? Are they declaring
war on Christmas?
j7uy5 | June 17, 2007
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">
href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070608-afirst-look-at-firefox-3-alpha-5-gran-paradiso.html">Firefox
3 (
href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.0a1/releasenotes/">Gran
Paradiso) should be available in beta form in late July 2007.
There is no firm release schedule for the gold version. The most anticipated feature will be a new way to store bookmarks.
Both the interface and the internal code will be changed.
Sort of like in del.ico.us, bookmarks can be given tags.
Unlike del.ico.us, you will still use folders.
Such a…
j7uy5 | June 16, 2007Problem:
Flyaway cat hair.
Backgound: Cats require brushing. If the
cat has long hair, and the humidity is low, brushing the cat will
release cat hair into the lower layer of the atmosphere. This
hair will get on your clothes, the sofa, the carpet, and it will go
places it is not wanted, such as in your nose. You may
sneeze. Repeatedly.
The solution...
Solution:
Put cat in a suitable cardboard box with an open top. Brush
cat. The cat will writhe around in the box. This
will generate a static electrical charge in the cardboard.
Flyaway hairs will be attracted to the sides of the box…
j7uy5 | June 16, 2007Problem:
Flat tire, wheel won't come off.
Backgound: This problem came my way today.
A friend had a flat tire, but was not able to get the wheel
off.
The solution...
Solution:
Turn on computer. Google "remove stuck car wheel". Find
advice: loosen lug nuts by 4 or 5 turns. Drive car back and
forth a few feet, a few times. Get out and change tire.
Outcome: Happy motoring!
j7uy5 | June 16, 2007How do you think it feels?
href="http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20070614_lame_ducks_unite/">
j7uy5 | June 15, 2007I
suppose this is good, although it is too little too late. It
would be a lot better to prevent these casualties in the first place.
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070615/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_mental_health;_ylt=AkK1R.ayIAt68x7AdfLqKR.s0NUE">Army
plans to hire more psychiatrists
PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Overwhelmed by the number of soldiers returning from war
with mental problems, the Army is planning to hire at least 25 percent
more psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.
A contract finalized this week but not yet announced calls…
j7uy5 | June 15, 2007This
would be a good time to raise the gas tax. Seriously.
In fact, it should be raised using a ratcheting mechanism.
Whenever the nationwide price of gas goes up, that should
become the new price. If the wholesale price goes down, the
difference would be replaced by a tax increase. That way the
price at the pump would never go down.
Oh, and oil companies should never get subsidies. Never.
If more exploration is needed and they think they can't
afford it, they can ask for a federal loan. But repayment
would be expected. Chief corporate officers would be
personally liable for…
j7uy5 | June 14, 2007This
is kind of a rambling rehash of an old
href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2004/03/multidrug-resistant-tb-lessons-about.html">post.
But it turns out to be topical now. What is more it
illustrates some interesting points about evolution: some obvious,
others subtle. One thing is shows very nicely is that once
nature solves a problem, the same solution keeps cropping up in other
places.
On March 16, 2004, the World Health Organization released a report on
multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. This is a serious problem,
especially in the former Soviet states of eastern Europe…
j7uy5 | June 13, 2007I
used to read computer magazines a lot. I would chuckle when I
picked up a copy of PC Magazine, or whatever, and it had, it large red
type: XXX releases the Fastest Desktop Ever!!!
Next month someone else would be making the Fastest
Laptop Ever!!!
What, you think they are going to start making them slower?
Now:
Bush
job rating hits record
low in NBC/WSJ poll
Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:51PM EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's approval
rating has dropped to 29 percent in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal
poll released on Wednesday, his lowest mark ever in that survey, which…
j7uy5 | June 13, 2007
HT to
href="http://markmaynard.com/index.php/2007/06/06/theo_jansen">Mr.
Maynard for pointing this out. (He also pointed out
the Corner
Brewery,
which is an even more remarkable invention.)
The creator is
rel="tag">Theo Jansen:
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Theo Jansen, artist,
studied science at the
University of Delft Holland. The first seven years being a artist he
just made paintings. Then he starts a project with a big flying saucer,
which could really fly. It flew over the town of Delft in 1980 and
brought the people in the street and the police in commotion.…
j7uy5 | June 10, 2007This is not
exactly news, but it is nice to have some specifics that put the issue
in perspective.
href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-execpay10jun10,0,3379172.story?coll=la-home-center">CEOs'
compensation can significantly impact shareholder value
By Kathy M. Kristof, Times Staff Writer
1:11 PM PDT, June 9, 2007
Compared with the pay of celebrity chief executives such
as Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellison, the $7.3 million in total compensation
pulled down last year by Synnex Corp. CEO Robert Huang is practically
paltry.
But set against the tech-product distributor's…
j7uy5 | June 10, 2007I am
not skilled enough to do this, but maybe someone out there is.
What I want is a utility that will take a bit of html, such
as for the sidebar in a blog, generate a image file that looks just
like the html would if it were rendered on a web page, then find all
the links and map them to that image file.
Then when a blog page loads, instead of calling up a gazillion little
picture files and running a bunch of little java scripts, it would just
need to load that one image. It seems as though that would be
a lot faster. Of course it should be smart enough to know
when it needs to…
j7uy5 | June 9, 2007Why
is it that recovering persons with alcoholism should not drink
near-beer (beer with little or no alcohol)?
...Hank
had been dry for several weeks thanks to a radical withdrawal program,
but a simple walk past Pete's Tavern on any given night almost erased
his will to abstain. During the daytime he did not feel a craving for
alcohol, but when he passed the bar in the evening--when he saw the
warm light through the windows and heard the glasses clinking--he would
be sorely tempted to run inside for a beer. Addiction researchers call
this phenomenon "conditioned desire." If a person had…
j7uy5 | June 8, 2007Does
this...
(nuclear football)
contain one of these...?
(alcohol analyzer)
Seriously.
It never occurred to me before, but shouldn't it
be required that the President stay 100% sober at all times?
Apparently not...
This unkind photo was published by Britain's #1 quality website,
Telegraph.co.uk. It accompanies
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/08/wbush108.xml">a
story on a "stomach ailment" that troubled Bush on the last
day of the G8 summit. More
href="http://www.towleroad.com/2007/06/is_bush_off_the.html">here.
j7uy5 | June 7, 2007
Amy Goodman has a good article on Truthdig. The
reason I like the article is that it provides follow-up to an issue
that was in the headlines, briefly a couple of years ago. It
has largely been ignored by the media since then.
href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070605_a_hypocritical_oath_psychologists_and_torture/">Hypocritical
Oath: Psychologists and Torture
By Amy Goodman
Jun 5, 2007
First, do no harm. This tenet of medicine applies equally to
psychologists, yet they are increasingly implicated in abusive
interrogations, dare we say torture, at U.S. military…
j7uy5 | June 6, 2007
"You can't handle the truth!" ranted Jack Nicholson in
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Few_Good_Men#Trivia">A
Few Good Men. I never saw the movie, but
I saw the commercials.
Several months ago, Seed
Magazine (a darn good publication) published an
article entitled
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/free_dscovr.php">Free
DSCOVR!. The article informs us that a fully
functional, paid-for satellite is sitting in storage, not used.
At
a time when the Earth's climate is at the top of practically every
nation's agenda, it might seem perplexing that there's a $100…
j7uy5 | June 4, 2007
These kinds of images were making the rounds a couple of years ago.
Kind
of cute. But now, at least a few people in Vermont are taking
it seriously:
href="http://www.mytelus.com/ncp_news/article.en.do?pn=oddities&articleID=2690258">Vermont
secessionist movement gains support
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
MONTPELIER,
Vt. (AP) - Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a
small cadre of writers and academics in Vermont want the state to
secede from the United States.
The secessionists hope to put the question before citizens in March.
Eventually, they want to…
j7uy5 | June 4, 2007
href="http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070402/toronto_survey_070402?s_name=&no_ads=">Baghdad
was ranked the world's least enticing city with a score of 14.5.
"Least enticing." That is one way to put it.
j7uy5 | June 3, 2007
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">This is
an interesting drug. Rarely prescribed, but interesting.
It is older than what we typically give today. It
is an antidepressant with a twist.
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">In
order to understand why it is interesting, you need to know a little
bit about the pharmacology of the drug.
rel="tag" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoxapine">Amoxapine
is a tricyclic antidepressant, in my book, or at least in my
head; but I have seen it referred to as a tetracyclic. It
depends on whether you think all the rings have to have…